Back to Three
by Pontificator
Summary: [oneshot][NaruSasuSaku] Team Seven learns to live, hate, and love. It's been a long journey from start to finish, but all Naruto wants to know now is how long it'll take to get back to the beginning.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto.

* * *

Sakura wrote a letter once, when she was seven and sweet and shy. She took a pen and wrapped her short fingers awkwardly around it, curling hiragana and -- since she was a precocious child -- curling kanji from the tip.

Ino said that this was how you caught a boy. And although Sakura wasn't sure how pretty words could hook a boy like the fishermen hooked fish, when the recipient of her letter made no reply, Sakura just assumed that he was too busy. Ino, after all, was never wrong.

It wasn't until Sakura turned thirteen and was faced by that boy's back as a response to her words that she realized that words couldn't reach someone who wanted to be lost.

* * *

Sakura used to think that she had never truly hated. She had never swallowed and felt a hot spring of sulfur burble at the base of her throat; never found herself yellow with nausea and an indefinable red blindness. She had seen the effects of hatred and, like the intelligent girl she was, avoided them for her teammates' sake. Sasuke was blind, she was sure. Even Naruto could enter bouts of crimson horror when riled into righteous fury. They needed her to lead them when they lost their vision, she told herself. They _needed_ her.

Her vow to never feel the sour-bitter-pungent taste of hatred on her tongue held firm even when a vicious man with a slippery voice erupted their village. Her vow was strong: it was a bastion built by desperation. But it broke one day, tremulous and trembling, because worse than the snake man's bite was the emptiness in Sasuke's voice as he said painlessly,

"Ah, it's Sakura…"

* * *

It came to Naruto's attention one morning that Sakura was the type of girl who brightened things. Well, he'd always _known_ it, dimly, like the urge to take a leak when he was excited, or the need to, uh, y'know, do _that_ in the morning. He just hadn't been _conscious_ of it, like how he was fully conscious of the energizing power of ramen.

But today, the clouds were out and the sun was hiding, and Naruto felt quite miserable. He was never one for overcast weather, and he grumbled mutinously to himself about the persnickety behavior of old women in leadership positions who desired scrolls to be delivered at their beck and call. He consoled himself with the knowledge that at least there would be Sakura to accompany him.

His tetchy mood vanished when Sakura arrived, pink hair bright under her hood. She was frowning, but that didn't matter, because it hit him, as her eyes sparked and mouth opened and his heart lifted, that Sakura was like . . . was like ramen. She _did_ things to people. Like the way she made Sasuke's dark eyes seem to reflect some kind of shiny tint when he looked at her, or the way she made Kakashi-sensei laugh and seem young again when he evaded her pointed questions.

Naruto pondered on this revelation. Sakura wasn't like Ino. Sure, Sakura was pretty, but then, Ino was pretty, too, and _she_ didn't do things to people. At least, not the way Sakura did. He decided that Ino was like a star, like gold; she outshone people, made them lesser. But what exactly did Sakura do?

His mind refocused on Sakura's sweet voice.

"Honestly, Naruto," she was saying, a faint look of disapproval on her face. "Why didn't you wear a coat?"

"I'll do that next time, Sakura-chan!" said Naruto. "I promise it's stuck in my head now, see?"

Ah yes. Sakura made people brighter.

* * *

Sasuke lunged at her, an angry heat in his eyes. Twisted on his face, in chilling contrast, was a small, cold smile. 

Sakura's face was ashen as she leapt back on the water (as ashen as his terrible, glorious wings) and she narrowly escaped his vicious grip—But then Naruto was there, an orange shield, bright and tart and solid on the churning river, with a glowing mass of spirals in his hand.

Sasuke halted. Naruto opened his mouth to speak, but Sakura stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder as she stepped around him.

"Come back, Sasuke," she said over the hiss of the falls.

"There's nothing for me there," said Sasuke.

"There's _everything_ for you here," snarled Naruto, and he dropped the rasengan in his hand to shove him down into the rippling currents and kiss him hard against the downstream pull.

It took a while before Sakura tugged them out onto the bank, and when she finally did, Sasuke wore a stunned, furious look, and Naruto grinned vindictively.

"Let's go back to Konoha," she said. "Let's make a home. You don't need the curse seal anymore, Sasuke; you don't need those wings."

Sasuke seemed ready to protest by the belligerent set of his shoulders, but Naruto silenced him with a glare.

When Sakura leaned forward to cup his cheek and kiss him gently, Sasuke leaned back toward her.

* * *

Word of their return arrived long before they entered the village. They had been gone many, many months, traveling many days past the boundaries of the Fire Country, and there had been few who had not expected their demise. There had been even fewer who had expected them to return with the Uchiha's arms slung around their shoulders, their faces haggard and feet weary, his eyes dim and youth faded. 

(Ino was the first to sight them from the gates, and she could almost not recognize him, so changed was the boy who had once caused her heart to flutter madly, insanely. The only butterflies she felt now were those of trepidation.)

Years had crept by in their absence, the devastation wrought by the Sound and the red clouds had dissipated, and steadily, tentatively, the village had been nursed back to health.

The first thing Naruto did, after catching wide-eyed stares from children who knew nothing of demons and foxes and certainly not the demon fox, was to drag Sasuke and Sakura to a ramen stand.

It was there that he propositioned them both, after too many cups of sake, too many glances at Sasuke's sneer, too many grins at the pretty redness of Sakura's cheeks, and too much bristling at the raised eyebrow of a nearby Kakashi. (He had greeted them with congratulations for defying the general consensus of the village by remaining alive.)

The doorknob of his apartment was cold and coppered with rust, but Naruto wrenched the door open anyway with a vicious twist. Sasuke watched the door creak inward with tired eyes and a sullen silence, but Sakura reached out to grasp Naruto's hand.

"Wait," she said. "Why—"

"Why are you doing this?" Sasuke interrupted.

Naruto turned to them, blue eyes bright and desperate. His face was a lean, hungry shadow in the dark.

"I want to go back," he said. "Back to when we were three."

They both knew he didn't mean age.

"Okay," said Sakura, and she stepped inside, pulling Sasuke in with her.

For years and years, the slow, suspicious buzz of the village would hum around them in scandal and distaste. But it didn't matter, because the only question they cared to answer was how long it would take to go back to the beginning.

* * *

**A/N: **This was written back in October for 31 Days as a series of drabbles. I changed a bit of wording here and there, but it's remained mostly the same.

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End file.
